One of the best parts of being a foreign scholar advisor or immigration lawyer is that each person comes into our office with his or her own story. Each day we balance our interest in hearing about their work, family, and culture with the need to process cases and clear our desks.

However, it is important to keep in mind that in the person’s story may be a key fact that will become important in the visa application. The applicant may be able to skip a step or qualify  under a different category than planned, or worse, there may be something in the person’s background that will prevent the visa being issued once it is approved. This advisory attempts to make a simple checklist that will catch as many of these facts as possible without turning every intake interview into a day-long event.

See the attached PDF for the full-text of this article.